Class Summary, Nov 1

This week we had two guests: Virgil Swamp, from the IT department of the City of Monterey, and Ed Cho, from the design firm Hanna Group. Virgil was a laid back guy who always looked at the big picture. Lately technology has gotten a lot cheaper, and skilled workers have gotten a lot more expensive. Thus the best way to save money is to use a lot of technology and very few workers. If something can be automated, automate it. It may cost something for a programmer to write the code to do it, but once it's done you won't need people to do that task, and technology is always cheaper than workers (these days). Virgil learned this when he was in the arctic working for oil companies. It's especially true there; anything a worker needs has to be flown in. Computers can be put on a task and left to complete it.

Virgil talked a bit about data centers. They seem to be the way large companies are going. A company can put together several data centers, and it'll still be able to function if one of them goes down. A data center needs cheap power, good cooling systems, and accessibility. Without cheap power all the computers will be a lot more expensive to run. Without good cooling, they won't last nearly as long. They also need both physical accessibility to replace parts, and digital accessibility to keep the software working.

Virgil also talked briefly about the internet boom. He described it as "incredible". In 1995, there were 75 websites. Total! There are over 150 million now, and that number is growing every day. The internet doesn't take weekends off.

The other speaker for today was Ed Cho. He was born in Korea, and he's traveled around a fair amount, both physically and in terms of his major. He graduated from Monterey High, then went to Cal Poly and majored in programming. He got burnt out after 3.5 years. He took some business classes to relax a bit, and found he liked business better. He transferred to San Jose State for a business degree, but ended up getting a publication/design degree instead. He worked for a few years, then opened his own printing house. After awhile, he expanded into design as well. He figured he only had one more step to go to be a full service business - marketing - so he expanded into that too.

Ed told us that local people may cost more than overseas workers, but they're worth it because they can respond quickly. It might take a few days to get an overseas designer to change an element of a product, but a local guy can do it and email it back in a few hours, or a day at most.

Ed also advised us to check out fashion magazines to see what colors work lately. Our own color choices shouldn't be the deciding factor - go with what's popular.

Ed shared a story about one student he hired. The student's work screamed "Hire me!" - literally - so he did. We shouldn't be afraid to tell employers that they should give us a chance, that we can prove ourselves worth hiring. We just need to be prepared to live up to this. If an employer hires you and you suck at your job, you're going to get fired. Relatively easy in, relatively easy out.